Oiκοςpiel, Book I

• Title — Oikospiel • Developer — David Kanaga • Released — 16 February 2017 • Engine — Unity • Modes — Single-player

Oikospiel has been described as an experimental or art game, and includes first- and third-person exploration elements set across 40 levels in five acts. Across these acts, the player controls various characters as they explore the environments. The scenes depict the story of a team of canine programmers developing an opera of the Laurence Sterne novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman for their publisher, Donkey Koch. Following the cancellation of their project by the publisher for running over budget, the dogs stage a general strike in line with their union, the United Animal Workers. The Union is organizing a global gaming festival named the Geospiel in the year 2100, and are courting the dogs of Koch Games to join.

Oikospiel is the first game released independently by David Kanaga, the audio designer and composer of the video games Proteus, Panoramical and Dyad. Kanaga began work on the game in late 2014, after discovering the Unity development tools would allow him to create a game on his own. Many of the game's visual assets were imported from other sources, including the Unity Asset Store and TurboSquid, with Kanaga using keywords to locate imagery, "piecing diverse components together" to have an operatic or "engulfing quality". Kanaga stated the game's narrative involves exploring the "image of global warming and the industry of its denial", partially inspired by the work of Naomi Klein and her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. The title is a portmanteau, including Oikos, the Greek word for "household" and the root of "economy" and "ecology", and Spiel, the German word for play, uniting the game's themes of video games, politics and the environment. The game was released on itch.io and via a pay what you want model on the developer's website, where users can input their annual household earnings or operate a wind turbine to adjust the cost of a virtual "ticket price" to download the game. In parallel with the game's release, Kanaga self-published a sixty-page libretto containing a "deeper backstory, plot interpretation, and walkthrough" in complement to the game.

Oikospiel received the Nuovo Award at the 2017 Independent Games Festival. The game also received the Grand Jury Prize at the 2017 IndieCade Festival.